I think we mainly need the rest of the team to recover from the weekend and turn up to the drawing board.
Currently moving and having cake day. Apologies to my non-presence on the forums recently.
Design: Cycle ShroudsOur med core crystals are made from three melded small crystals, and the more we have explored how this works and attempted to address the problems presented by it, the more revelations we have made in what this particular setup makes possible. After several years of research, our scientists believe they are finally ready to turn the myriad of theories and articles on the subject into concrete applicable concepts.
Our latest studies that discovered the "heartbeat" of the crystal revealed something extraordinary. Each small crystal acts independently, with the additional capabilities of the med crystal as a emergent property arising from thier interactions.
To refresh you shroud traditionally requires the crystal to be brought down to zero power, and then be raised back to functionality. We think we have found a way around that.
The dedicated engineers on board our ships use specifically designed tools to prevent the crystals from de-synchronizing. A spontaneous desynchronization creates a mess of the internal energy flow in the crystals and results in a dramatic loss in power. However, with only slight modifications to the current tool set, we believe we can induce a controlled desynchronization. Controlling the desynchronization in the proper manner should prevent and inefficiency, and essentially just reduce the core to three independent small cores operating very close to each. Using this process, the operation of the ship can be shunted to two of the crystals, while the third is brought to zero and refreshed. The process is then repeated for the other two crystals, ending with completely refreshed shrouds for the entirety of the ship.
This will of course necessitate the ship running on partial power for the duration of the procedure, but as the viper is already stated to be somewhat oversupplied with power it would be an ideal situation for such a procedure. We already carry dedicated engineers to prevent desynchronization, so the procedure would be rather quick to carry out, and would not require to removal of anyone from thier posts.
Best of all, our captains could shout "cycle shrouds!" mid battle.